Sea butterfly

Clione antarctica

She lights up

the dark is all

transparency

and grace.

Afloat

and

in flight

she trusts

the wisdom

of tides

rides lightly

on every moment.

(Introducing the pteropod. She's tiny. Unselfconscious. A flame-orange dancer.)

I'm heading away for a couple of days/a week - not sure yet how long I'll be gone. Up the coast to Waikouaiti, then on to Naseby and possibly North West from there. 'Tis time for a little rest, flight and floating.

These are interesting days with interesting ways.

Be well. Take care.

PS. How curious is this? I came across this painting made by my daughter Alisaundre when she was about five. We'd been to a theatre performance; hence the dark 'stage' and backs of heads. (My hair was waist-length at the time - you can tell I'd had one of those 'wavy, hippy' perms... )

Of course she would never have intended this but I can't help myself (and am sure she won't mind)... Every time I look at her little airborne angel, I see a pteropod... Bless her. Bless them both. x

Learning curves

I've been tottering along on one - a learning curve, that is - which explains why I've been a bit off the wires lately. What can I say about this latest little adventure? For one, it's not been plain sailing. It's been stormy. There were unseen rocks and reefs. I nearly ran aground. Several times. My boat threatened to capsize, but didn't. We took on a fair bit of water, though; thankfully, I tend not to mind getting wet and discovered I had buckets and stamina enough to stay up all night (or two, as was required) and scoop, scoop, scooooop!

I've been immersed in my film-making project lately; it's titled Hidden Depths - Poetry for Science. The cast includes a science diver, a pteropod (I'll find my pics of this exquisite small wonder and post them here soon), an ancient giant of the uni-cellular world, foraminiferan Notodendrodes antarctikos - and the flotilla of bamboo boats that I posted a week ago. I'd initially visualized this film as a collaborative endeavour but after a series of twists, turns and odd disjunctions, I realized it was something I really had to give shape and voice to on my own. This was nobody's fault. It was simply 'one of those things.'

Apparently there are times when - for reasons both obvious and subtle - it's just not possible to articulate the images and atmospheres that occupy the space of one's head into language and shapes that others can take away and work with. Even though this is stating the obvious, it almost always takes me by surprise. I'm by nature The Eternal Optimist, and accede to feeling momentarily bruised and bewildered at the realization that ideas and dreams I'm excited by are not necessarily all that captivating to others! We're all differently wired - and 'tis good so. For all the upheaval of this past week, it's been reassuring to realize - again - that most, if not all, of the time, these sorts of experiences are thoroughly worthwhile in terms of The Overhaul (yes) Picture.

I've been wrestling with language recently. Does this happen to you? Speech has not been coming easily; as though my mouth and tongue are having to deal with a foreign alphabet. Then again, life does at times take on a wordless (or is it word-free?) shape.

Sometimes, I wonder whether in fact it's primarily in and about the silent conversations.

Anyway, the exciting news is that my first film 'proper' is wrapped up (all 13 mins, 08.22 secs of it!) and on its way to Oslo where it will enter the stream of other films being considered for Norway's International Polar Year's PolarCINEMA screening at the end of June; this is an adjunct event to the 2010 Polar Science Conference I submitted a paper to some weeks back (haven't heard anything re; the outcome of that yet; it can't be long now till we're all notified.).

Cadence, The Intertidal Zone & I went for a pounding walk along St.Clair and St.Kilda beaches on Friday evening. The light was dramatic, portentous almost - in an illuminating way. When we started out, I was feeling stressed and gruntled by the unforeseen challenges of what seemed (just days ago) to be an ailing project - standing on a knife-edge between letting the whole thing go and stubbornly trying to find a constructive way forward.

We were talking about learning curves. The beach must have overheard our conversation; it offered up some stunners -

Kelp drawings - in the first, a boundary, threshold space, line of music; in the second, a vessel, horseshoe, effervescing hull?

Every time I look at this small sand stage, another dancer emerges. What - or who - might come forward to meet you...?

There's no telling the scale of this form from a photograph. Might it be a child's dropped lollipop? A sculptor's mallet? A burnt-out torch, tympanist's drumstick or broken chunk of quay?

Come to think of it, the film's a bit like this --- it, too, plays with concepts of scale and is more about questions than answers. A meditation on wonder. My wish is that it will s l o w us down (for at least 13 mins 08.22 secs!), encourage a fresh sense of connection with the natural world, each other and our small-large selves.

Bamboo boats

Alone

All one

More Verlyn Klinkenborg

'No Messages on This Server,' and Other Lessons of Our Time

"I do not own a BlackBerry or a pager.

I don't chat or instant-message or text-message.

My cellphone could connect to the Web if I let it, but I don't.

I don't gamble on the Internet nor do I game on it (or on any other electronic device).

And yet I'm starting to twitch.

I have three everyday telephone numbers, not counting Skype and a calling card, and two fax numbers.

I have six working e-mail addresses, as well as a few no longer in use.

A couple of weeks ago I started writing a blog for The Times.

Part of my job, as a blogger, is to read and approve the publication of readers' comments.

That is the equivalent of another form of e-mail.

There are probably half a dozen Really Simple Syndication tools on my computer, and one or another of them is always unfurling the latest ribbon of news in the background.

It is astonishing how old the morning's headlines seem by evening.

Back in the dial-up days, computer users made brief forays onto a bulletin board or some outpost of the primitive Internet, all the while clocking connection time in order to keep costs down.

Going online was like driving a Stanley Steamer — better for scaring horses and wowing the youth than for long-distance hauling.

There was always a slightly neurotic edge to it.

You could feel the seconds ticking away while nothing happened.

But nowadays turning on the computer is synonymous with being online.

Who turns the computer off?

It's rarely worth severing that digital link. 
For some of us, the computer has become less and less a place to work and more and more a place to await messages from the ether, like hopeful spiritualists.

I thought I was a fairly temperate user of computers.

But in the past year or so I have become addicted to e-mail.

I confess it.

You probably know the signs.

Do you tell your e-mail program to check for messages automatically every two minutes — and then disbelieve it when it comes up empty?

Have you learned to hesitate before answering a new message so it doesn't look as though you were hunched over the keyboard, waiting?

Do you secretly think of lunch as a time for your inbox to fill up?

But the clearest sign of e-mail addiction is simply to ask yourself, what is the longest you've gone without checking your e-mail in the past two months?

Anything longer than a broken night's sleep is good.

I blame my e-mail addiction, in part, on the United States Postal Service.

Seeing the mail lady pull up to our rural mailbox in her red station wagon with the flashing amber light on top is one of the high points of my day, whether there is anything "good" in the mail or not. (The "goodness" of mail is another question entirely.)

When you think about it, the postal system is a remarkable thing, even in this new universe of instant-delivery systems.

Its genius is this: The mail comes only once a day.

All that expectation gathered into a single visit!

And once-a-day-ness is built right into the system.

I try to imagine the mail lady bringing every piece of mail to our mailbox as she gets it.

In fact, that's exactly what she does, because the mail shows up only once a day at the local post office.

I suppose I could tell my e-mail program to check for mail on a postal schedule — once a day — although minutes are the only intervals the software understands.

But that would defeat the logic of e-mail, which is meant to arrive seriatim — hence, its addictive punch.

The principle of snail mail is infrequency; the principle of e-mail is frequency.

The real question is, what is the frequency for?

I think of e-mail as a continuing psychology experiment that studies the effect on humans of abrupt, frequently repeated stimuli — often pleasurable, sometimes not, but always with the positive charge that comes from seeing new mail in the inbox.

So far, the experiment has revealed, in me, the synaptic responses of a squirrel.

It is a truism of our time that we now have shorter attention spans than ever before.

I don't think that is true.

What we have now are electronic media that can pulse at the actual rate of human thought.

We have the distinct discomfort of seeing our neural pace reflected in the electronic world around us.

Amid all that is wasteful, distracting, irrelevant and downright evil about e-mail, there is also this.

We carry dozens of people, sometimes hundreds, around with us in our heads.

They pass in and out of our thoughts as quickly as thought itself.

E-mail is a way to gather these people — so many of them scattered across the globe — into the immediacy of our lives in a way that makes even a phone call feel highly formalized.

It is the nearness of e-mail, the conversations it creates, that is addicting as much as the minute-by-minute stimuli.

I try to remember that when I am getting twitchy, when I start wondering whether the mail server is down again.

I tell myself that I'm just listening for a chorus of voices, a chorus of friends."

Verlyn Klinkenborg writes a blog for the New York Times. 

Lucky us. 

A swallow in the hand

"A couple of times in the past few weeks, I've stopped by a local swamp where the peepers live. It's hard to believe that the high-pitched chorus of such small frogs could amount to a roar, but it does. It rises into the night sky and swallows the listener. My internal compass seems to go awry in the midst of such an outcry. In the darkness, there is no horizon except a silence somewhere on the far edge of that cacophony. To the extent that any one peeper has a sense of identity, it must dissolve completely in that night song, because I certainly feel myself dissolving when I hear it.

Somehow the question of identity is always emerging on this farm. I found the body of a barn swallow lying just inside the barn the other day. There was no telling how it died, but it must have done so very soon after it returned to the farm. I noticed the intense particularity of its body, its sharply cut wings, the way its plumage seemed to glow with some residual celestial heat. But it was the particularity of death, not the identity of life, a body in stillness while all around me its kin were twittering and swooping in and out of the hayloft. 

I wonder what the roar of the human consciousness rising over our swamp would sound like it if was audible. I am stunned by the human ability to think of one's life as a thing apart - with the particularity of a swallow held in the hand. I end up admiring the thoughtless animate persistence of every creature around me, the woodchuck without a doubt in the goldenrod stubble, the horses certain in the pasture, the arrogant geese whose footprints melted the frost this morning.

I keep a dead hummingbird and a downy woodpecker in a bag in the freezer. Down at the barn, the dead swallow lies beside a wren I found this winter, its tail as sharply cocked, as impertinent, as when it was alive. I don't know why I keep them, except to notice, as I often do, that among small birds, death is not very corrupting. The flight vanishes, and the song. But the feathers live on as if that swallow might wake at any moment, surprised to find itself perched in my hand."

 

Verlyn Klinkenborg. 

Dulcie's toaster house

Spring in Port Chalmers - Dulcie Kirk*, felt-tip pens on paper, 2002

DOWN DULCIE'S STREET

Dulcie draws a toaster house. 

Outside, a web of copper wire 

weaves windows into walls, ties bricks 

to fascias, laces gutters to roof 

to chimney to fly-away

chimney smoke. 

She sends a charge 

across the facade

singes the white sky 

blue, flashes red 

onto the front doormat. 

Inside, there are no lines 

in sight. Breath settles 

into shadows, thought hovers

underfoot. There are shivers

of sound, the invisible murmur 

of magnetic fields waking. 

They shift and fold the paper 

        envelope of home. 

 

Dulcie walks us down her street. 

Beneath the double light of moon 

and sun, she draws electricity, trees

and bees. Her felt-tips ripen

fruit, coax flowers to open. She understands 

the secrets of dragonflies, seeds germinating 

in silent underground places. 

You can tell 

she knows that ink 

dreams in water. 

* I recently learned that Dulcie Kirk has died. I did not know her well but on the few occasions we met, was touched by her refreshing transparency and lack of compromise when it came to her art-making. She was remarkably prolific. 

Whilst sifting through boxes and files from my past, I came across this poem I'd written for Dulcie eight years ago in response to her Port Chalmers drawing. She was in her late seventies when she drew this house; well into her eighties at the time of her passing. 

>< 

Reminders of fireflies

I wake happily before 5 most mornings these days - love being up in the early dark, early light. It's blissfully quiet. There are no cars. No dogs barking. The harbour gulls and neighbourhood birds are still asleep, sweet heads tucked neatly underwing. 

There's an interesting energy in the air at the moment and it's not just because we're finally experiencing summer. It's deliciously warm for a change, but this is about more than that. The energy I'm talking about is fiery - the kind that comes with a buzz and crackle. Good fire. Welcome fire. Fire that energizes, rather than scolds, devastates or scorches. It's transformational - in the way light is. 

Do you feel it, too? 

Light dancing in a tin bucket  - Antarctica 2005

Speaking of light, this morning I visited The Tearful Dishwasher and was reminded of fireflies. (Thank you, Tearful.). The image on his latest post took me back to a time and place I return to often in heart and mind and is one I am always grateful to be reminded of. 

Four years ago, my good friend Katherine and I spent three days and nights with a river in the lap of the Du Toit's Kloof mountains. 

I told Tearful how we'd both needed the river "... to be afloat in it, carried by it, near it' and how on the third night '... the black mountains flanking the river like curious custodians came alive with flocks (not swarms) of fireflies. They were big as birds. We had never seen anything like it before - and haven't since. For what might have been an hour or so, but was a timeless time in the way such moments are, we watched them delighting in the moonless night... I have never forgotten its magic."

How susceptible are we to seduction by light and fire? 

I know I am. At the moment, for instance, I'm working on an exciting and somewhat unexpected project - a film. It's totally firing me up - I especially love the fact that it's a collaboration, that we have an absurdly tight timeline and that its completion depends entirely on people's trust, creative surrender and generosity of spirit. This is the very best way to work. Fire under foot, in the belly, ablaze in the group.  

Robert Wilkinson over on Aquarius Papers posted this marvelous piece by Goethe a day or two ago - 

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.”

Goethe's encouraging us to think in terms of capacity, rather than limitation. Not necessarily a simple straight line, this, but definitely worth a try!

><

PS. I have enough parsley in my garden right now - Italian and the old-fashioned, crinkly-perm kind - to send in all directions; as fast as I pick it, it multiplies. Every day, I bring a small armful into the kitchen to snip and pop into the freezer. It'll come in handy some months from now, when soup weather returns... would anyone out there like some? 

Temporarily disheveled

My feathers have been in disarray these past few weeks. (Actually, the ones I'm showing here belonged to Murray, plucky bird that he was; no doubt, still a zealous preener.) 

In time, I might find language to write about aspects of my recent 'in-house' process, but for now, suffice to say most of the changes taking place involve 're-' words... recognizing, reconfiguring, recycling, re-booting, remembering, redistributing, recharging, releasing - and ultimately, the realization that I feel a sense of gratitude and relief at finally reaching a place of relative respite and reasonable resolution.  

There's a way to go yet (isn't there always?) but let me risk saying this; while so much depends on the angle and way we look at things, the straggly bits really do have a habit of finding their place. Which is pretty remarkable, don't you reckon? 

There are times when - no matter how squiff & skew we let our tail feathers get - grace abounds. 

   

     

>< 

Miriam Levine's poetry collection The Dark Opens has kept me company during these 'off the wire' days. 

Thank you, Mim. Your writing is tough and delicate; striking and wise. The dark does indeed open and when it does, light is already there, eager to come skipping on in...

Ten

Ten out of Ten is a group exhibition celebrating the 10th anniversary of The Diversion Gallery at Grove Mill Winery, Marlborough. It opens at 2.00PM today. 

Images aren't up on the gallery website yet, but should be soon.  

Meet Murray

This is him as an adolescent, hard at his English lessons. 

I miss this bird. 

Dangerous spontaneity

Hmmm. Well, nothing may come of this morning's unanticipated madness, but I seized the moment and submitted abstracts to two conferences - the first goes under the heading Antarctic Visions: Cultural Perspectives on the Southern Continent and takes place in Tasmania at the end of June. The second (this is the one that's really taken me by surprise) is Oslo's International Polar Year (IPY) Science Conference (from what I can see, the design of the host building is based on the anatomy of icebergs and is quite beautiful).  

The submission date for Oslo was 20 January (yesterday's date) and - as seems so often to happen with me - I only found out about it at 10.00 this morning. 

The fact the globe is round is incredibly helpful at times like these. In this instance, it meant that 10.00AM on 21st in NZ was still hours before midnight the day before in Norway. It's all quite weird, really. Anyway, I rolled up my sleeves and pulled out the stops and when I finally pushed the Send key on my lapdog*, it was 12.20AM in Oslo (twenty minutes post-deadline). I was pleasantly surprised when the forgiving conference computer responded within seconds with a very polite Thank You for your submission followed by an email with the reassurance, Your abstract is in our system. Whew. I might just have made it...  

Being 'in the system' doesn't necessarily mean anything in terms of whether or not you actually end up going, of course. I'm not attached to any particular outcome but will admit that my fingers and toes are loosely crossed. Programme headings for both conferences are enticing and there are many reasons why I'd really love to participate.  

Invest wholeheartedly. Detach fully. This seems to be the only way to approach things these days. 

As a poet friend once suggested 'it's not difficult but it's not easy either.'   

*Thanks for the pet name, Pen

Ascend - descend - transcend

CB - from Hidden Depths series - Oil & liquin on paper, 2010  (detail)

The drawings and paintings I'm working on at the moment are explorations of perception and memory; contemplations on the ephemeral-yet-enduring nature of it all. Do we need to descend in order to ascend and - ultimately - transcend? 

><

"Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed or governed their passions, or have no passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings" wrote William Blake 

Oh, Haiti

Light a candle.

Light many candles... 

Relief donations:

NZ

USA

South Africa 

UK

Australia

Canada

Also

Impact your world

Give a little

 

&

Wendy Smith's 'How your small donations can change our world' 

Washed up

yelp |yelp|

noun

a short sharp cry, esp. of pain or alarm : she uttered a yelp as she bumped into a table.*

kelp |kelp|

noun

a large brown seaweed that typically has a long, tough stalk with a broad frond divided into strips. Some kinds grow to a very large size and form underwater “forests” that support a large population of animals. 

><
* I've been 'bumping into tables' lately. 
Ouch. Sometimes it helps to stand on the sand and yelp to kelp.   

It depends how you look at it

Inside the stone the world is round.  A woman wears jeans and a clean white T-shirt.  There’s a canvas hammock in the garden, strung between the magnolia and a flaming red maple.  Her family’s washing hangs on the line, snapping its way towards freshness. A taste of summer.

 

Inside the stone the world is beige.  Flat. Bland. Pale.  The sun’s light is tepid, the sea runs a pale wet tongue across the beach leaving behind a faint tea stain.  The sand is a crushed malt biscuit.

Inside the stone the world is an apricot.  Wind loosens the ripe scent of sex and soft fruit, of wet and round and orange.  Men and women peel off their clothes, step out of their shoes.  They stride past work on cool, bare feet.

  

Inside the stone the world is a puzzle, a thousand pieces strewn across a landscape. A man is gathering them up, constructing a scene from the inside out.  They remain out of focus until he picks them up, transforming at once from flat and grey, to monumental, three-dimensional structures; his dream of a different life keeps him captive.

 

Inside the stone puddles are pewter ovals, sleeping.

 

Inside the stone is a black world, a place with neither windows nor doors. The woman searches for a trapdoor, any means by which she might escape the darkness.  But there are only concrete walls and wooden floorboards that threaten to split.  She can smell the sticky stench of bitumen, the singe of a hot, high fire.

 

Inside the stone is a soft wax world.  Children know the silent slide of honey.  They walk with candles; lights tilted to flatter the forest, they highlight moss and lichen, outline fallen pine needles with a subtle edge of gold. 

 

Inside the stone the world is populated by flocks of primordial birds.  They burrow their way out of the dark soil in our gardens and look us straight in the eye.  Their skin is damp and pink as a Desiree potato.  They carry the dirt of the world on their backs, feed on mass nouns and ripe plums.

 

Inside the stone the world is a bulletin board. Sharp corners stab and cut. People and events are paper cut-outs, underlined, trimmed, pinned to its surface with cold stainless steel pins.  Disturb the layers to see what lies behind or beneath and everything will turn to dust. Take heed. The printers’ pigments will leave telltale stains on your fingers.

 

Inside the stone is a trapped storm.

 

Inside the stone a spill of full-cream milk spreads across a linoleum kitchen floor, splashes down the back doorstep and out into the garden.  It flows down the slope, past the exuberant yellow peonies and flowering cherries, gathering speed and doubling in volume as it travels. By the time it has crossed the neighbourhood boundaries, it is a wide white river; the children and untethered lambs of the suburbs run along its banks sploshing, stretching and bending, drinking their fill.

 

Inside the stone a miniature narcissus threatens to pull up its roots.  It shakes its head, catapults its scent across the sprawling grey of the city.  Perfume drizzles down street lamps, drips onto sidewalks, sticks to the dusty flanks of buildings.  Industry blushes and for a moment steps out of the shadows.

 

There is a universe inside a stone.

CB 2007 

Stone poems

2010 & an old mud house looking to take on something new

Naseby is a tiny historic gold-mining village that grew up in the 1860s during NZ's gold-rush days. It's about an hour and forty minutes North West of Dunedin, in the Maniototo region of Central Otago - a landscape of dramatic temperament, few people and high, wide skies. 

I've just spent a night up there, seeing friends and checking up on the old mud house. I had big dreams for this place when we first met. It looked its age - how could it not after a hundred and forty seven years - but stood its ground with spark and attitude. Fixing it up would require a lot of hours and elbow grease, but none of it felt un-doable. There'd be something thrilling about bringing the old place back to life. (And the shabby, dilapidated courtyard was calling out for clematis and grape vines, espaliered pear and olive trees, a great big banquet table, benches, lanterns, a brazier - company...) 

 

The mud house was the town's apothecary in its early days and has since played the role of draper's store, stationery shop and South Island farmer's holiday home. I was reminded again this visit of my first-love intention to set it up as a creative exchange space; a retreat where I and others could meet away from our usual pulls, for the purpose of writing, painting, talking, brainstorming, or being silent. I still visualize it serving the wider community as a kind of atelier or meeting place, whose primary purpose would be to foster interdisciplinary, inter-continental collaboration, research, discovery, conversation. 

I've drawn these ideas up and spoken of them before, but not here... The concept is both embryonic and pretty much fully-formed. I wonder - does this come across as audacious or fanciful? It might. But is that a reason not to speak? 

Is persistent, heartfelt intention enough of a foundation to build on? What responsibilities would a communal space like this bring with it? What challenges? What far-reaching connections and joys? (If you'd like to have a wander through the mud house, you can visit it here. I'd be really keen to dialogue about this potential, should the concept of such a space resonate with others out there?) 

Interestingly, during this brief overnight visit, I was reading through the Guest Book and came across an entry from a recent visitor. She'd written 'Great place! Ever thought of turning it into an artists' retreat?' 

The world works in mysterious ways. 

><  

Here's to a year that's '2000ft above worry level.' 

If and when worries come along (as they are wont to do), may you find all the tent pegs, can openers, mosquito screens, books, antihistamines, Russian fudge, picnic cutlery, fishing rods, swimming togs, friends, flags, golf balls and starched white bowling outfits you need to navigate your way through.